A lone English girls' passion for healthy eating, exercising, and living!

I'm my biggest competiton!

I ate all the stuff I had in my last post, with the addition of some strawberry flavour soya milk before lunch:

Which FYI completely killed my appetite! 9g protein in 250ml…oops!

When I got back from my lectures (GOSH did they drag on today! Luckily, the last 2hrs was developmental psychology, which I enjoy so it wasn’t too bad – especially as our lecturer was encouraging all the blokes in the hall to cheat, for ‘evolutionary reasons’!! It made for comic listening :p), I was a bit peckish, but knew I really really wanted to go for a short run, after being cooped up all day. So I ate a nice big juicy apple:

Then took myself out for 2miles and a bit.

Lap 1 – 8.25

Lap 2 – 8.08

Lap 3 – 1.08 (226m!)

I was origionally going to try and beat my 7.03mile from this morning, but when I got out there, a slow and steady 2miles seemed more appealing, so I just did that. Another day!

Afternoon snack – ryvita minis and a hot chocolate:

Dinner – in the mood for one thing – stuffed pasta! It was asparagus and mozarella stuffed pasta today; I kept trying to get a photo, but the light in the kitchen was soo bad, my camera was having none of it! Stupid thing, as soon as the light is just a LITTLE bit dim, it doesn’t focus…So, just one lonely pic of the final product:

Can you guess the veggies on the side!?

And just now I polished off some 2% greek yogurt, a hot chocolate, and these two squares:

a square of Guylian (nomnom, I LOVVEEE that chocolate), and some Lindt ‘Orange Intense’! Both delicious 🙂 Although again, I want to punch and scream and shout at my camera for taking such TERRIBLE blurry pics!

Moving on:

I tell yous though, today has been such a mentally frustrating day.

[And here comes a big ramble….!! I don’t think it’ll make much sense, I’m just writing as I think. Isn’t that what blogs are for!?]

I seem to have a problem – I’m too competitive! I had a fabulous run this morning and got (for me) a great time/speed. Yet, as soon as it was over, I just wanted to go out again and beat myself, ie get a better time. It’s like, I always always have to be better – I can’t just enjoy my (minor) achievement. I went for a second run today, which technically I didn’t need to do – I wanted to for 2 reasons. 1) I’d sat on my butt in lectures all day and had pent up energy and 2) I wanted to get a faster mile in.

I think generally, this competitiveness is a really good quality, but sometimes it gets out of hand. When I had my ED for example; if I’d eaten, say 1000 calories one day, my next goal would be to see if I could beat myself and eat 900 the day after and so on. Obviously this is not healthy and I’m not advocating it in anyway, I’m just using it to illustrate a point.

Basically, I think I need to learn to not be like this to such an extreme. I’ve noticed I don’t seem to really have days off from exercise, which is silly – but it’s cos I’ve set myself a baseline, and being so competitive, I don’t like to fall below that baseline. 95% of the time, it’s fine cos I love exercise and I enjoy it, but I still get the odd day when I think ‘corrr I could use a day off’, but my competitiveness tells me to keep going.

That’s partly why today was so mentally exhausting – all I could think about was tomorrow – when was I going to fit in my run, when I had lectures at x, y, z times, AND it’s going to snow/rain heavily? Then I realised, why doesn’t tomorrow be my day off?? I haven’t had one in ages and ages, and my body needs days off reguarly.

I am being my own worst enemy in situations like this! Half my head was saying ‘take a day off’, the other half was, well, being competitive and extreme and saying no! On top of all the stress I’m feeling at the moment, it made for a very miserable few hours, cos it was ALL I could think about.

So, I was proactive. I decided this couldn’t go on! I was being stupid -the more I thought it’d be good to take a day off, the more a little devil part of me was saying NO. Sooo, I did two things – I emailed my favourite blogger and asked for her advice – she replied straight away and was so helpful! And I did some self-reflection; I wrote out a list of reasons why I should take days off:

I could use that time when I would be out running to do something pretty and relaxing – ie paint my nails whilst watching Neighbours! (The former part, a suggestion from the blogger :))

I could use that time to work..not as appealing, but something useful!

ALL my favourite bloggers – whom I admire enormously and really look up to – take 2 or 3 days off. These girls are ‘normal’, they don’t have hugely negative ED pasts or anything, and as I have a skewed perception (at times when I’m stressed) of what is normal exercise or eating habits, I look to their posts/lifestyles to see balance.

I’ll be avoiding injuries – I got injured last year cos I overdid it, and seeing as I have plans for 2 half marathons and a full marathon this year, injuries are NOT on the agenda!

I’ll be fresher for my long run on Saturday.

I need to put on some weight.

Professionals take time off.

It’ll be my own personal challenge – I can use my competiveness to challenge myself to break an habit!!

SO, this all helped! I’m going to set my alarm tomorrow morning so I have enough time to get ready, havebreakfast, blog etc, but NOT enough time to run. Then I HAVE to take time off from proper running!!

So that’s the end of my rant – sorry if it makes no sense, I was just getting things off my chest!!

4 Responses

Your rant makes so much sense. With an ED there is always a little voice telling you you can do more running, burn more calories, eat less. It takes strength to overcome it and I’m sure you can do it. Enjoy your day off and spending time with yourself. xx